A FROG believed to be extinct for more than two decades has been rediscovered by a Manchester scientist.

Zoologist Andrew Gray found the brown and metallic-green tree frog – with the Latin name Isthomhyla rivularis – in the remote forests of Costa Rica in Central America. His discovery has excited zoologists, biologists and conservationists around the globe as it raises new hope that other species considered to have become extinct as a result of climate change may have survived.

These include the fabled Golden Toad of Costa Rica, believed to be one of the first casualties of global warming.

ScienceDaily (Mar. 1, 2010) — Scientists broadly agree that global warming may threaten the survival of many plant and animal species; but global warming did not kill the Monteverde golden toad, an often cited example of climate-triggered extinction, says a new study. The toad vanished from Costa Rica’s Pacific coastal-mountain cloud forest in the late 1980s, the apparent victim of a pathogen outbreak that has wiped out dozens of other amphibians in the Americas: here.